Book Turkey Craft

* Warning. This post is not for people who get squeamish about altering books by tearing pages. You know who you are. 😺

I spent Saturday in the craft room of my local library learning how to alter a book to make a turkey. The instructions are deceptively simple, though the task can be monotonous and depending on the size of the book you are using take a lot longer than you think.

For this craft you will need: 2 hard cover books. The Librarian said a book of about 200 pages was a good size to use. A glue gun. Lots of glue sticks, an X-acto knife and I would add a roll of tape. You will also need to draw a turkey head or find a coloring book image or clip art. Your turkey head should have two sides. You may need to copy your image and then reverse it and glue both sides together. The Librarian had  pre-printed turkey heads for us and had pages already to be used for the turkey tail.

Open up the book you are going to use to make your turkey. From the very first page, fold the page up into a triangle right to the spine. 

With your X-acto knife, cut along the top of the triangle to the spine. Then cut along the spine to the top of the page. Remove the page. If you cut deep enough, you can remove several pages at once.

Repeat until you have folded all the pages in your book into triangles and removed the top section of pages. You can recycle the top pages as they won't be used in the rest of the craft.

From the second book, cut  all the pages along the spine. You might want to do this first to save some time. Take a page and roll it into a cone. Secure the page with tape. (We didn't have tape to use at the library and just put a dab of hot glue on the end. I found that the page would sometimes unroll so thought the bit of tape would be more secure)

The rolled pages are the tail feathers for the turkey. Glue them to the book to form the fan. The Librarian thought it was easier to work from the ends to the center. Whatever works for you. You can have as many rows of feathers as you like.

If the back of your turkey looks unsightly you can cut a semi-circle from the books pages. I didn't have book pages that were wide enough so I taped two pages together.

Glue the semi-circle over the paper cones to hide the uneven or messy back.

Insert your turkey head into the folded pages and admire your work. Depending on the size of your book and how quickly you work, the project can take 2 hours. 

While the group was working, we were talking about how to add color. Some people thought of spray painting the turkey. I though an easier solution would be to use glossy, magazine pages for the turkey tail feathers.

The Librarian said the front and back edges of the book can also be decorated with pine cones, small pumpkins, or flowers to create a fancier centerpiece.

If you don't want to destroy alter any of the books on your book shelf, ask your librarian if there are books the library is going to recycle. Old dictionaries, encyclopedia, old textbooks would be perfect for altering. The Librarian used books for this craft that they had received that were misprinted  and the publisher didn't want them returned. At my library there are also books for sale for $1. The money for these books is used by the Friends of the Library to sponsor programs such as this book craft.